BWANA Yesu Asifiwe! (Praise be to the Lord Jesus!)

I’m excited to share stories with you from my recent short term mission trip to Tanzania. As I have thought about what to share, I am drawn to the theme – ordinary people serving an extraordinary God.

To give some context, I feel compelled to share a little about how Church of the Open Door (COD) has been connected to missions and to Africa Inland Mission (AIM) from the very beginning.

R.A. Torrey founded Church of the Open Door in 1915 and served as pastor until 1924. He also served as Africa Inland Mission (AIM) US director from 1911-1928. It’s quite a rich history we have in supporting and being a part of AIM.

In 2019 Colin McDougall challenged our church leadership to pray about reaching an unreached people group. (Colin and his wife, Becca, are long-time COD missionaries who serve with AIM.)

That led to us launching this church wide prayer in 2020: Father, use us to build a reproducing church among an unreached people by 2030. 

As we prayed this prayer together that year and considered six or so unreached people groups, God led us to focus on the Nyamwezi tribe in Tanzania.

At that same time another COD missionary couple, Andy and Margaret Andersen, were also serving with AIM and had already accepted an invitation to the Tabora area from the Africa Inland Church Tanzania (AICT). They were on the ground in Tabora.

Their primary focus was and still is on theological education, equipping students at Tabora Bible College to reach out to Muslims and plant churches. They are particularly focused on villages among the indigenous, largely Islamic, Nyamwezi people.

So our revised church wide prayer then became: Father, use us to build a reproducing church among an unreached people, the Nyamwezi, by 2030.

In February of 2025, COD sent a seven-person team to Tabora for two weeks to support Andy and Margaret. When I found out about this trip I really wanted to go, and my wife and I prayed about it.

I had never been to Africa. I had only been involved in local ministry and generally helping around church when needed. I have experience with being on a yearly short-term Navajo VBS ministry trip. There are rumors floating about that I may have the gift of evangelism.

When I was invited to join the team, I understood why every other team member was invited.

• Lead Pastor Dave Anderson would be leading a pastors’ conference with the 60+ pastors from the Tabora Diocese.

•  Children’s Pastor Jessica Lee would play an amazing role ministering to the children in schools.

• Rylie Anderson would use her sports skills to conduct sports ministry and minister to high school age girls.

• Tim Lee was assigned to make a video documentary.

• Grant and Kyleen Hughes, who were veterans of short-term Africa mission trips, would lead and support the group.

So I asked our missions pastor what he wanted me to do there. He said, “Go and report back to the church all the things you see God doing over there.” In essence, help our congregation get connected and excited about what God is doing in Tabora and surrounding areas and with the Nyamwezi people.

So, in what ways did I witness the Spirit of God at work on this trip that I can share with you? 

1. Beautiful Worship

I saw beautiful worship at the Africa Inland Church in Tabora and experienced my first ever four-and-a-half-hour church service. This included amazing worship for two hours in Swahili. It was like an amazing wedding celebration that we might see in America, but with more joy, more dancing, and much more worship music. My heart was filled.

2. Salvation for Hamisi 

I saw five years of prayer answered for salvation for a Muslim Nyamwezi man named Hamisi. Hamisi had been nicknamed “Mango Man” by our children’s pastor five years earlier when the church in the village of Ipulu was meeting under one of his mango trees. His wife was a Christian, but he was not. Mango Man then donated the land for the church to be built, but he still rejected Christ.

How exciting for me when we arrived in that village that God had sent a storm a few days earlier and took off the roof from Hamisi’s house. His foot was injured from debris that had fallen from the roof. His roof was gone, and his foot was swollen and looked bad.

I told him that I had travelled 17,000 kilometers to pray for him and tell him about Jesus. After praying for his roof and for his foot, he grabbed my hand and walked for the first time into the church. He had never entered it before.

During that same visit, a Muslim Nyamwezi man named Paul spontaneously surrendered his life to Jesus during an altar call.

After that, Hamisi allowed Margaret, AIC-Tabora Pastor Thomas, and me to lead him through the Roman Road. Hamisi, too, accepted Jesus as Savior.

BWANA Yesu Asifiwe!